Hard Decisions

Anyone who has read this blog a little bit will have heard me mention Tim Green a couple of times. Tim is a fellow Daryl Stanley athlete who I used to train with up in Darwin until he moved down to Cairns and I shifted to Perth.

Watching Tim develop as an athlete in Darwin was a fairly impressive experience. I think most of the squad can recall Tim's transformation from everyday triathlete to triathlon weapon. A bit over a year ago Tim made a successful application for his Professional Licence and has spent the last 12 months or so racing in the Pro ranks. Doing himself pround with some truly great performances.

I have had a good chance to catch up with Tim at my last couple of races, including at Putrajaya on the weekend. Tim had a fairly tough day out in Putrajaya and we spent quite while talking afterwards about motivations behind why we do this crazy sport, what we get out of it etc. Always interesting to see what makes other athletes tick.

Anyway yesterday Tim decided that he would be having a break from racing. Give himself a chance to regain some equilibrium in life, which he felt had become a bit too dominated by the triathlon world.

For what it is worth I think Tim has made the right decision for himself at this time. Speaking to him in Putrajaya, it seemed very much like this break was something he needed. I am hopeful he will come back to racing, but if he decides to move on with life, then I can understand that decision as well. After all there is much more to life than a race course.

Seeing Tim make that decision made me think about that moment in sport when it stops being fun. Anyone who has done a sport long term will know what I mean. Even those who may not have had that moment themselves will have seen it time and again in the retirement announcements of famous Olympians etc (Kathy Freeman's and Ian Thorpe's are ones that come to mind). Sometimes to the outside world these announcements make no sense. 'Things were going so well, why stop?' But in the end, it doesn't matter how well things are going. If the passion for the sport is gone, the motivation to do the work required doesn't last much longer.

That is what it comes down to really, sport at a high level demands a lot of sacrifices. Sometimes those sacrifices are purely physical, and other times they are much more emotional. The physical stuff often isn't a problem, to be honest most elite athletes kind of enjoy that bit. The emotional stuff can be harder to ignore long term. That feeling you get that you are possibly being the most selfish person in the world asking everybody around you to put their lives on hold while you pursue a dream. That you are putting an unfair amount of load on your loved ones, because you simply don't have the time to do your share. Those feelings can be hard to ignore. If those feelings get loud enough that they drown our your reason to get out of bed in the morning and put yourself through a few hours of pain, pretty soon you are going to stop doing it.

Then there is the doubt that you get, the suspicion that perhaps you are missing out on some of life's moments while you head to bed early so that you can beat the dawn and disappear on your bike for the next four hours. There is a counter to that doubt of course. I know for a fact that I have seen more of life's moments through sport that I would have without it. But the doubt can also be hard to ignore, particularly once family is involved.

The tricky thing is that none of these things are right or wrong. You can tell a person that you don't mind carrying a bit more of the load, that they aren't missing life, but if the passion isn't there, then it won't matter. You can't force a person to enjoy a sport again. In the end it is an entirely personal decision and one that may not make sense to the outside world. But when it comes to this sort of thing, it doesn't really have to.

I have done quite a few sports over the years and have come to this moment a couple of times. It is never an easy decision to make, but generally an athlete knows deep down when they need to step away, even if just for a little while. It may not be an easy decision, but usually it is a necessary one. Sometimes it is a sad moment, but it doesn't really need to be, after all it is only a sport. Really it just means that you are moving on to some of life's other adventures and that can only be a good thing.